To further clarify, it was not VM that Marconi liked, it was dB Planner. You see, about 3-4 years ago Marconi aquired Mobile Systems International who made a wireless network planning tool called Planet. Planet used to be the most widely used tool of its kind in the world. Anyway, after Marconi bought MSI, Planet sales declined due to several reasons. One of the main reasons is that Planet uses outdated slope intercept models and it only ran on Unix. dB Planner on the other hand uses a very advanced physical optics based predictive model and it runs on PC's and it uses MI as its core. Marconi tried to "port" planet over to a PC using Exceed, but it was not a great solution. Soon Marconi started losing customers to dB Planner. In fact I believe the straw that broke the camel's back was Leap Wireless' decision to drop Planet nationwide and go with dB Planner instead. SO, Marconi decided that rather than poor a bunch of money into Planet to update it, they would just eliminate the competition by acquiring them. The fact that Northwood also produced VM was an added benefit, but I assure you it was only that. After all Marconi was never in the GIS business before. If you wonder how I know all this, I used to work for MSI several years ago and still maintain a good relationship with several of the top managers. Not only that, I was trying to sell MSI the same model that is used in dB Planner (CRC-PREDICT) when they decided to aquire Northwood instead. Also, I am a direct competitor of theirs and produce a Network Planning tool, Athena, which is also based in MI and uses the CRC-PREDICT. I currently have the only sub-licensable licence for the CRC-PREDICT in the world because of an agreement between the CRC and Marconi. They couldn't exclude me because not only does my license pre-date theirs, but so does my planning tool. Here endeth the history lesson.
Cameron Crum Stephen Dunn wrote: > I see that the Website for Northwood Geoscience, makers of Vertical Mapper, > now links directly to Marconi - Have they been taken over? Do they still > exist and are they still developing VM? > It seems a pity if they have been taken over, I thought they were a rather > smart and useful company. > > Stephen Dunn. > > _________________________________________________________________ > Internet access plans that fit your lifestyle -- join MSN. > http://resourcecenter.msn.com/access/plans/default.asp > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Message number: 3872 --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 3878
